Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

Muslim women are not allowed to fart

An Islamic city council in the Indonesian province of Aceh, which follows Sharia, has banned female citizens from passing gas.

Sayyid Yahia, mayor of the city, told media that a ban was needed, as farting does not go well with the Islamic values of modesty. “Muslim women are not allowed to fart with sound, it’s against Islamic teachings,” he said. Meanwhile, the Indonesian Feminists Association told local media they will attempt to block the smelly law as they deem it discriminatory.

Mayor Sayyid Yahia said the law aims to save people’s morals and behaviors. “When you see woman fart loud, she appears like a man. But if she sit sideways and pass it quietly, she looks like a woman,” Sayyid said.

Although the proposed law does not ban “quiet fart,” passing gas with sound is actually not uncommon in Southeast Asia, particularly for women consuming potatoes and peas. Obviously, women maintain that they feel healthier, farting loud. Fathima Khan, a medical doctor at the Al Banni Islamic Hospital in Aceh’s capital is critical of the proposed law: “There is no need to question this practice, let alone regulate it, because people do it for their health and safety,” she said.

The mayor declined to give The Wadiyan details of what the punishment would be for violators. While another member at the City council, who wished not to be named, said if convicted by the sharia court, the offender could receive 20 lashes for small farts and up to 3 months prison time for larger ones.

I got this news today and I thought it was true. It did not come to mind that it could be a satire or a joke. To tell the truth, religion and it’s anti-women laws are nothing but a bunch of cheap jokes. Women’s burqa is a joke. Banning on female passengers to straddle motorbikes behind male drivers is a joke. Banning women from wearing trousers, whipping women for wearing trousers, banning women from driving, asking female workers to “breastfeed” their male co-workers in order to work together, tracking women’s cross-border movements etc. —all are dirty fucking jokes! These jokes are now realities for women. So when a real joke pop-ups, not everyone can realize it is a joke. I took fart joke seriously. If religion can enter women’s vaginas, it can enter their assholes too. It is so unbelievable that the fart joke is just a joke!

Comments

Going through this post remind me of a passage in Satanic Verses -by Salman Rushdi.“Salman said, rules about every damn thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one’s behind. It was as if
no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free.”

Good catch…adding few more lines from same book……”The revelation — the _recitation_ — told the faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep, and which sexual positions had received divine sanction, so that they learned that sodomy and the missionary position were approved of by the archangel, whereas the forbidden postures included all those in which the female was on top.”

I wouldn’t say that the satire at The Wadiyan was a silly joke.
It is obviously intended to evoke thought and let people start talking about the shitty situation they are in.
Like you said, the reality is even sillier when it comes to religion.

Sometimes a joke is becoming reality afterwards, then we accept it as fact and would even respect it.

They even went a step ahead of the Satire news – by making women walk around with a high voltage emitting electric device in her underwear!

This story is celebrated all around in Newspapers as great invention and the inventors even got some “Gandhiyan bullshit award”!

See how the news is presented:
“Studying in a convent girls school, we were always taught to be good to everyone around and bear a cheerful smile. After stepping into the real, cruel world we realized that our smile could not last for long as the threat to our purity and integrity always lingered on — bla bla bla”.

I know Madam Taslima is capable to write much better than me on why words like “convent school” and “our purity” implanted here on a story where women are encouraged to wear an electric device in their underwear.

I am asking where is the outrage? Why people just take this as a great invention?

I’m still surprised at how you got an award in writing. But anyway, people like you, who so call themselves human right activist, seem merely nothing more than hypocrites. You disgraced a burqa, ok, fine with me, but don’t become a feminist after the number of immoral intercourses increase. You talk about farts, yeah, then don’t cry over your husband/ what eva you have has immoral relations with other women because he thinks you’re too disgusting. Laugh all you want, but while you’re laughing, try to read a bit of the QURAN and UNDERSTAND the value of woman, whose respect in Islam is so HIGH that they have been exempted from earning-unless they desire to earn, as this is a man’s job, and he will be punished if he can not do so.

The Prophet said, “Faith (Belief) consists of more than sixty branches (i.e. parts). And Haya (This term “Haya” covers a large number of concepts which are to be taken together; amongst them are self respect, modesty, bashfulness, and scruple, etc.) is a part of faith.”

Well said Kong! They laugh at respectable and honored teachings of Islam because they are “totally ignorant”. If Allah (God Almighty) endows them the will to recite and understand The Holy QURAN, they will never think about criticizing the Truth (The Religion Islam), on the contrary they will love it.

I, being a Muslim Woman living in a Muslim country, and practicing pardah (wearing burqa), am respected by people around me. As all my body is properly covered, nobody gloats over me, and I feel safe from all types of sexual harassment. As i am a Muslim woman, no muslim man talks ill of me because my religion has given me that respect for being a woman. I have freedom of earning for myself if I want and not to share a penny with anybody (husband and others) if i don’t want. Although it’s obligatory for my husband to earn and spend on me.

Islam respects everybody. That’s why it gives us ways to lead our lives accordingly in order to live respectfully in this life and hereafter.

It’s good to research and know about the subject before talking stupidly against it.

In Islam, men who are not mehram cannot meet women. They cant touch each other, until they marry eachother.

For example… You have precious things in museum/gallery which you people are not allowed to touch because they will get dirty/spoiled, otherwise, they remain in their pure state. Same rule applies to Woman in Islam, they are the purest if follow Islam in a true manner.

Difference is that precious things in museum are kept behind glass to restrict you from touch, likewise Burqa/Hijab keeps woman behind such great moral care.

If you see woman in bikini/open you will surely have negative intentions for her but thinking will not be same for a covered woman. Likewise openly kept toffee without wrapper is prone to illness while wrapped toffee is safe.

I feel that this joke is in very poor taste. In fact within some cultures, it is complementary of the Host who has served good food to his guests and that they have eaten to their fill, having enjoyed the meal to the fullest. “Happy Flatulating”

All reactions from Muslims go to prove what a retrograde religion it is.
One example is that Qurran says after a Muslim has had a shit, he should wipe his bottom with sand, likewise Muslims are expected to carry small stones always, since after urinating they are expected to rub the tip of the penis on these stones(which are then thrown away).
Both the above regulations are out of sync with the modern world.
No doubt there must be good things in Islam like all other religions, but it has to keep pace with modernity and not go back to the era of Mohammed

People throw gallons of water into the toilet but became miser when it comes to clean their organ after urination,
they don’t like to clean the organ with water after urination just because this practice is done by Muslims.

in the olden days ,imagine the Arabian desert where water was difficult to find ,if it is allowed to clean the organs with dry clay stone, people are finding it unhygienic , they are expecting mineral water bottle in those days .
there are good thing in Islam but it require open heart and mind

[…] that ladies? Take a look at how this was made into a joke that almost the entire world actually believed was true. Not so far off from what most people think could actually happen! What does that tell […]